Description
Book SynopsisCritics of public organizations have charged them with rigidity, insensitivity to public needs, inefficiency, and other faults. The charges are not new, but the surge of urban political activism during the 1960s gave a sense of urgency to demands for organizational change. Marcus Foster and the Oakland Public Schools examines an urban political executiveâs efforts to meet those demands. In an attempt to reform education bureaucracy, Marcus Fosterâformer superintendent of schools in Oakland, Californiaâintroduced a three-part program of community participation, decentralization, and budgeting. Each component responded to a specific criticism of bureaucracies, and each was strongly supported by students of organizations. The most successful changes were those for which the superintendent controlled the requisite resources, enabling Foster to initiate community involvement and determine its procedures. But where change required existing bureaucratic units to relinquish some of t
